


Piece By Piece

by Pegasus143



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Father's Day, Gen, POV Multiple, Songfic, background Kara/Luther
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 19:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19235356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pegasus143/pseuds/Pegasus143
Summary: Father's Day can be happy, even if it's a little messy sometimes.





	Piece By Piece

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "Piece By Piece" by Kelly Clarkson  
> Content Warning: discussion of Cole's death, mentions of drinking and red ice, mentions of unhealthy parent-child relationships, mentions of Todd being an abusive prick  
> Idk if I'm going to make this "canon" for New Jericho Tower or not, but if I decide to later on, I'll pop it into that series  
> Enjoy and Happy Father's Day!

Red. That was all Hank saw when Chris had first announced to the police station that him and his partner were expecting. Hank had always known, due to the nature of his work, that horrible things happened to people’s parents and children. He had always known, due to the nature of human life, that parents and children always ended up dead.  
He’d just never really thought about that until Cole’s short life touched his.  
Cole was both the best and the worst thing that had ever happened to Hank. He’d been the light in Hank’s life, the person he’d gotten to come home to each day, the person he’d look forward to taking out on his rare days off. On one of those days off, they’d gone to a giant toy store, and after pretending to drive all the different kid-sized cars on display, Cole had loudly proclaimed that he wanted to drive a red fire truck when he grew up because he wanted to help people like his father. That was Hank’s proudest moment. Then there was the day they’d been driving home after getting McDonald’s, Cole laughing in the backseat while watching a video showing that clown mascot with the crazy red hair, when the brake lights on the truck in front of them abruptly turned on. The car couldn’t get enough traction on the icy road, so it spun out and rolled over into the ditch. The next thing he knew, Hank was seeing the red blood on Cole’s body as an android nurse informed him that Cole hadn’t made it.  
Every day after that was devoted to red. Hank didn’t know how to deal with his grief, so instead of taking time off work to process Cole’s death, he worked harder than ever to complete a series of red ice drug busts. That was when he learned that the surgeon on-call the night of Cole’s death had been doing red ice. After that, his life had been nothing, nothing, nothing—not until Connor came into it, making Hank face the drug once again. It seemed like everywhere he saw humans and androids together, he also saw red ice. But maybe—maybe that had more to do with the humans than the androids.  
Then he heard about Chris. Chris, who had taken every drunken word Hank said about spending as much time as possible with your kid to heart. Chris, who had only ever been kind. Chris, who had been the goddamned _perfect_ father, had almost died by his own gun at the hands of the deviant leader. But he hadn’t—he’d been spared, and ordered to take time off to recover. Both him and his child were still within the realm of the living, and that was a fucking miracle. Or maybe it was just a testament to the humanity of the androids, or the lack of humanity of some humans.  
Either way, part of Hank’s faith in God’s plan had been restored.  
***  
Dear Dad,  
It’s me. Your son. Yes, I’m doing fine, and yes, I’ve been eating, even though the food tastes terrible at rehab. And yes, my therapist told me to write this letter to you. She said I didn’t have to send it, but I decided to anyways, because I thought you needed to read this.  
The first time I heard your name as a kid was one day after I’d gotten the mail on my way home from school. I’d been going through everything, hoping maybe there’d be a toy catalogue or something, when I saw an envelope with your name in the return address. I didn’t recognize it, so I looked it up, and found out you were some bigwig artist. A rich guy. Someone who shouldn’t be sending letters to someone like my mom, who was nearly out of a job because of androids.  
I asked her about it when she got home from the late shift that night. She just sighed and said “that’s someone who sends money to help take care of you because he loves you. Just like I work hard to take care of you because I love you.” I think she said it that way because she didn’t want to explain what sex was or how babies were made, but it made me think that money equaled love. I kept thinking that when I heard about red ice from some of the older kids at school, when one of them took me on as a sort of apprentice, when I started selling to other kids and sneaking the profit into Mom’s purse. I thought that I needed to give her lots of money to show her that I loved her, and that I was willing to take care of her.  
You know the rest of the story—I got curious, took some, got addicted, got kicked out, figured out where you lived so I could convince you to help—all that. I realized right away after waking up in the hospital that all the red ice stuff had been a mistake, but I didn’t realize the connection I’d made between love and money until now, I guess. Love isn’t about making money to be able to take care of someone else—it’s about showing them you care, sometimes by taking care of them. And money isn’t the best path to love.  
I know you’ve told me that you’ve made some mistakes in your life, and that no matter what anyone said I wasn’t one of them, but I just kinda wondered if you thought the same way as me at some point in your life. No matter what your answer is, I meant it when I said I’m proud to be your son.  
Leo  
***  
“Get some rest, and tomorrow you’ll be stronger than me,” Luther said before turning off the lights and closing the door to Alice’s room. He could still hear her giggles as he lumbered down the stairs of the small house and into the living room.  
“I guess that stuck, didn’t it,” Kara said, grinning up at Luther from one of the chairs by the roaring fire.  
“You’ve kept some of your habits, too,” he said, nodding towards the fire as he sat down.  
Kara stared pensively into the fire. “I guess I’m just always worried about her. I know that she usually has her heat sensors off when she’s here with us, but whenever we go out or she brings a friend over, she has them turned on, even if it’s cold enough that she should be more comfortable with them turned off. I want her to be happy and comfortable around other kids, but not by being miserable and cold, or losing part of herself.”  
“Kara,” Luther began, “Do you know what one of the errors was in my system that made me become deviant?”  
Kara shook her head.  
“It was a paradox about you and Alice. There was no chance that you didn’t know Alice was an android, and that Alice herself didn’t know, and since you were searching through all the rooms upstairs, I knew you were trying to find her. But if you wanted to find her, why didn’t you just call out to her in your mind, ask her which room Zlatko had put her in? It just didn’t make any sense.”  
“I guess that just shows how bad of a mother I am, forgetting about a part of my child that could have helped me save her.”  
“No. It means you were a good mother. You realized that even though Alice knew she was a deviant android, that didn’t mean she was ready to accept it. All she’d heard from Todd was that androids were bad; all she’d heard from the TV was that deviants were murderers. You knew that if you made Alice confront the fact that she was an android, in that stressful of a situation, it might be too much for her. So you waited, and instead showed her the good parts of androids. You showed her that an android could be kind, loving, and caring, and that deviancy wasn’t bad. You were the one who allowed her to accept herself.”  
“You know, you were the first real father figure Alice had. Todd was supposed to be her father, but he never really was. I have less than a day’s worth of memories from Todd’s house, and within that time he yelled at and threatened me so much, and then I found out that he’d been the one who’d broken me, and that he’d been abusing Alice. I can’t imagine having a full bank of memories like that, what that would do to a person. What it did to her. But then you came along. You were the one who showed her what a father was supposed to be: accepting, trustworthy, an eternal protector.”  
“I don’t know what to say, but I’m glad that I get to be her father, and your husband. Can I kiss you?”  
Kara nodded and leaned over the side of her chair so the two of them could kiss.  
“Also,” Luther said, once they’d broken their lips apart, “You might want to see if Alice wants to play dress-up with you. It might help make you worry less that she’s losing herself.”


End file.
